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AS Roma soccer star Antonio Cassano is becoming a bit of a regular in these
parts, not necessarily for his soccer skills but for how he reacts when he
misses a goal. Well, it would seem nothing much has changed. As you can see from
last year's picture (on the left), when the ball misses the net Cassano likes
testing the elasticity of his shorts, a point he proved yet again at the weekend
(at right) during his side's 1-0 win over Modena. The mind boggles as to what he
does when he scores a goal.

Eagles on the edge

Whatever West Coast fans say about their team this year, one thing they can't complain about is boring finishes. The Eagles' four matches so far - wins over the Western Bulldogs and Brisbane Lions and losses to Port Adelaide and Essendon - have all been by less than 10 points. In fact, such has been the "evenness" of their games that overall they have scored just one more point than has been scored against them - 469 to 468 - giving them a remarkable percentage of 100.2.

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But there's more.

You see, stats whiz Martin Windsor-Black was so intrigued by all this he went
scurrying for his record books and discovered the last time a team had four
consecutive single-digit results to start a season was Geelong back in 1928 when
its biggest margin was just eight points.

Mind you, if Eagles fans reckon they could do without these heart-stopping
finishes, they should spare a thought for Hawthorn fans of 50 years ago. In that
1954 season, all of the Hawks four-to-11 round matches - eight in all - ended in
single-digit results, four of which they won and four that they lost.

300 games - but only just

Given that only 10 league umpires have reached 300 games before him, Gavin Dore is understandably looking forward to joining the elite group when he officiates at one of next weekend's round-five matches. But it is just as well that fate didn't intervene during Sunday's MCG match between Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs.

Gore, you see, was an emergency for that game and had one of the three
officiating umpires been injured during the course of it he would gone on as the
replacement. Yep, meaning that all the ra-ra the AFL has planned for this week
would have been to celebrate his pending game No.301.

Dore, of course, has had many memorable moments, not least this day in 1998
when he came face to face with Nicky Winmar during the Saint star's infamous
clash with Carlton.

A Demon, a Bulldog . . . and three bald
eagles

AFL pre-match press conferences can be such dry affairs,
and that's particularly so if you're a newspaper photographer. But no stopping
Age snapper Sebastian Costanzo at this "presser" for Melbourne skipper David Neitz and his Western Bulldogs counterpart Chris Grant. Yep, who would have ever thought it - seems that those "faceless" men who operate the TV cameras are pretty much "hairless" as well.

May day, may day

While Australia's swimming elite prepare for the Athens Olympics, one of our greatest-ever competitors, Susie O'Neill, is looking forward to a completely different occasion in 2004 - the arrival of her first child. And no chance of the former champion forgetting the due date either - it's May 17, the exact day in 2000 when she broke what was then the longest-standing world record in women's swimming, Mary T Meagher's 200 metres butterfly. Who would have ever guessed - from Madam Butterfly to Momma Butterfly on the same date.

Tall order

And we liked this line from basketball's man mountain, the Houston Rockets' Chinese star Yao Ming, proving that despite his great success in America he's not about to become a party animal. When the Rockets' assistant coach Patrick Ewing suggested he and Yao paint the town Ewing-style after a big win, Yao politely declined. "First, my mum would kill me," said the big bloke. "Then she'd kill you."

On a high

Tipping AFL winners at the weekend wasn't easy but here's someone who cashed in big time. It's the TAB Sportsbet punter who correctly nominated Geelong and Collingwood to fill the two legs of the high/low double. With a $20 investment on odds of $341 he collected a cool $6800. Nice work if you can get it.

Who said that?

"We have only lost two in a row. If we had won, it would only be one loss in
a row."- JAMES CLEMENT, Collingwood defender. Yep, hard to argue with
that, James ol' son.